Housing affordability has become a pressing challenge in many countries. Demand for housing has been fuelled by rising incomes, rapid urbanisation, and demographic shifts, including population growth, ageing, and a trend toward smaller households. At the same time, rising demand has outpaced supply, constrained by high construction costs, restrictive land use regulation, and limited public and private investment in housing. As a result, access to adequate, affordable housing has become harder for low- and middle-income households, as well as people in vulnerable situations.
These challenges resonate in Czechia and Poland, which have experienced strong economic growth and significant improvements in living standards, higher incomes and lower unemployment putting upward pressure on the demand for affordable housing. The report presents an-depth analysis of housing market trends and provides a set of policy actions to improve housing affordability and develop housing solutions for vulnerable groups in Czechia and Poland.
The analysis presented in the report draws on the OECD’s cross-cutting extensive expertise on housing and benefitted from inputs and insights from a range of actors in Czechia, Poland and other OECD and EU countries. This includes expert views from a broad range of Czech and Polish stakeholders collected through a survey circulated in each country, as well as two webinars with Czech and Polish stakeholders to discuss the draft recommendations. In addition, the recommended policy actions draw on practices and experiences from other countries, including insights from two peer-learning events with key institutional actors organised in Belgium and France in June and October 2024. The aim of these exchanges was to learn from practices related to increasing access to affordable and social housing; expanding the role of not-for-profit and private affordable housing providers; strengthening the role of land use, spatial planning and land-based finance tools to increase the provision of social and affordable housing; and expanding access to housing for vulnerable groups, including through the provision of integrated housing solutions. Finally, an OECD seminar, organised in May 2025, facilitated further exchange among Czech and Polish authorities and delegates of the OECD Economic and Development Review Committee, the OECD Regional Development Policy Committee and the OECD Working Party on Social Policy.
The work was carried out by the OECD in cooperation with the Reform and Investment Task Force (SG REFORM) of the European Commission, within the framework of the Technical Support Instrument (TSI) of the European Union.